The school gate is open a handspan.

Outside, on the pavement, there are eleven chairs. Iron chairs with wooden seats, the ones from the classrooms. They stand in a row against the wall, in the shade, a hand's width between one and the next.

At ten past seven Tawfiq al-Mabruk comes in. He is the first. He has been the first every day for eleven years.

He crosses the courtyard. The plaster on the left-hand wall has come away in three places and the brick shows underneath.

He opens the classroom with the big key. He raises the blinds. He straightens the desks in the front row, one by one, with his foot.

On the teacher's desk is the register. He opens it to the date and leaves it open.

On the wall behind the desk is the map. It is rolled up and tied with two rubber bands.

He takes the eraser and goes over the blackboard. The blackboard is already clean. He goes over it from left to right, twice.

A dog comes in through the gate, turns, goes out.

At twenty-five past seven four girls arrive. They have their books and no satchels. They come in through the handspan of the gate, in single file, and none of them looks at the chairs.

They sit at the two desks in the front row, two and two.

At twenty to eight there are six teachers standing in front of the gate and eleven empty chairs.

The mathematics colleague keeps the list. He reads the names out loud and marks them.

"Al-Mabruk."

Tawfiq is in the classroom. From the courtyard you can hear that he is in the classroom.

The colleague crosses the courtyard and comes in. He leans against the doorframe. He looks at the four desks that are taken and the twenty-six that are empty.

Outside, a woman stops at the gate, speaks to two of the teachers, then goes away the way she came.

The schools were due to reopen on the thirteenth of September. On the thirteenth of September the teachers were outside the schools and outside the offices. Two weeks later the union called a strike across every public school in the country, and the lessons of one million six hundred thousand pupils are postponed to a date to be set.

There are three demands. The colleague counts them on his fingers: the salary, the health insurance, the extra hours. He says the figure for how many they are, teachers and administrative staff together: half a million people.

Tawfiq wipes the top of the desk with his open hand.

The colleague says that this year he has lent him money three times in the middle of the month.

Three times. The mid-month loan is the salary that is not enough, and the salary that is not enough is the reason the chairs are outside, and the chairs outside are the three things the colleague counted on his fingers.

From the street comes the noise of a shutter going up, and after the shutter a radio.

Tawfiq opens his bag. Inside there is a whole stick of chalk, in its paper, from the year he started.

He gives it to the girl at the first desk.

"Write the date."

The girl goes to the blackboard. She writes the day, the month, the hour of the end-of-cycle examination. She writes large. The chalk leaves dust on the ledge below.

The colleague looks at the blackboard. He says that the one who is seventeen, if she loses this year as well, will not come back.

"I know."

The colleague says everyone knows. He goes out. From the courtyard he calls the name again, louder.

Tawfiq comes into the classroom. The four are at the desks at the front.

He takes the chair from the teacher's desk. He lifts it. He turns it upside down on the desk in the front row, legs in the air, the way it is done on the last day of school.

The four stand up. None of them says anything.

The girl at the first desk is still holding the chalk. She sets it on the ledge of the blackboard, on the side where the eraser is.

Tawfiq takes up the upturned chair again, holds it by two legs and carries it out. In the corridor the chair knocks against the doorframe. In the courtyard he turns it the right way up.

At the gate the colleague moves aside. Tawfiq puts the chair at the end of the row, on the ground, in line with the wall.

The twelfth.

He sits down. The iron is cold under his thighs, even in the sun.

The colleague puts a hand on his shoulder and holds it there for two seconds.

"Good man."

He goes back to his place, third in the row, and marks the list.

On the other side of the bars the courtyard is empty. The classroom door is open. Inside you can see four desks and the blackboard.

On the blackboard is the date.

The four come out one at a time.

The first passes in front of the row and looks straight ahead. The second and the third pass together. The last one stops level with the fourth chair, then moves on.

There are twelve chairs. Six men and six women. Two have newspapers on their knees.

At eight a van arrives, slows, goes on.

One of the four comes back as far as the gate. She looks inside. She moves off along the pavement, on the shaded side.

The dog comes back and lies under the first chair, in the shade. It stays there all morning and moves only when the shade moves.

At nine the sun reaches the row. The colleague shifts his chair half a metre. The others do not.

At a quarter past ten Tawfiq gets up and goes to drink at the courtyard tap, inside the gate. While he drinks, the classroom is in front of him. The door is open. The desks are where he left them.

The blackboard has writing on it.

Tawfiq turns off the tap. He goes back out. He sits down.

At eleven the chalk is on the ledge of the blackboard, on the side where the eraser is, where the girl set it down.

The date is written.